


I Did It All For Myself

by adiduck (book_people)



Series: No Choir [3]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: CC-2224 | Cody Needs a Hug, Cody is Going Through It, Depression, Gen, Hopeful Ending, Kid Fic, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Obi-Wan Kenobi Needs a Hug, The kid is Luke, Unreliable Narrator, in that there is a kid
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-04
Updated: 2020-08-04
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:41:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25714465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/book_people/pseuds/adiduck
Summary: Obi-Wan Kenobi's hut is entirely bland, dusty white stone and plaster on the inside. Cody borrows four-year-old Luke Skywalker to help him correct this.
Relationships: CC-2224 | Cody & Luke Skywalker, CC-2224 | Cody & Obi-Wan Kenobi, Obi-Wan Kenobi & Luke Skywalker
Series: No Choir [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1844878
Comments: 47
Kudos: 360





	I Did It All For Myself

“Cody!”

Cody had just enough time to plant his feet as a four-year-old practically flung himself out of his uncle’s speeder and straight at him. He braced and leaned down, scooping Luke out of the air right before he impacted Cody’s legs. Luke looked, frankly, shocked at this turn of events. Cody bit back a grin. “Luke,” he greeted back, and switched arms to reach up and make a whole mess of Luke’s straw-blond hair. Luke sputtered like every single cadet Cody had ever trapped in an affectionate headlock for judicious noogies.

“Nooooooo,” Luke moaned, mournful and full of betrayed feelings, and Cody did let himself laugh, as Owen walked up to the door. “Uncle Owen--”

“You’ve done this entirely to yourself,” Owen informed his nephew, gruff and amused. “Hello, Cody.”

“Hello, Owen,” Cody said, and tucked the four-year-old under his arm like a bucket, ignoring the shrieking that was trying to not be delighted and failing. “Thanks for bringing him.”

“Free babysitting for the day? You’re doing us a favor,” Owen insisted, wry, as he handed Cody a bag. Cody took it with his free hand--change of clothes for Luke. Yeah, they’d definitely need that. “I’ll recommend you go for a n-a-p after second meal, though. For the sake of your sanity.”

“Noted.” Behind Cody, the General came to the doorway, hovering just out of the conversation like he wasn’t sure of his welcome with his own guest in his own house. Cody mentally took a very deep breath and ignored him.

“Come in,” he said, and felt a reckless spite color the offer. “Have something to drink.”

“Thanks,” Owen said, and the humor in his eyes informed Cody he hadn’t missed the current dynamic in the General’s shabby little hut at all.

“Mr. Kenobi!” Luke hollered, catching sight of the General in the doorway. “Hiiiii!” He waved enthusiastically from his position under Cody’s arm, and the General relaxed, visibly, in the doorway.

“Hello, Luke, Owen,” he said, and stepped aside to let Cody pass with his cargo. “Welcome! Please don’t mind the mess.”

The “mess” in question was Cody’s doing, but necessary for this project. He’d spent the last two days hauling all the furniture into the middle of the rooms and covering it and the floor, taping up the edges of the walls and ceiling to catch any dripping paint, scrubbing and prepping the walls themselves for color. It had been an interesting set-up to live in, but General Kenobi hadn’t complained once, not even when Cody had dragged himself and what felt like enough speeder paint to cover half a fleet through the door and informed him that he would be using it on their stone and plaster walls.

His armor was sitting under a different tarp away from what would likely be something close to colorful carnage, white and pristine from the many, many times Cody had scrubbed it down over the last three ten-days. He very deliberately did not let himself look at it.

“Can we paint now?” Luke asked, catching sight of the neat line of paint cans and beginning to squirm in earnest. Cody obligingly set him down, watched as he spun on his heel and slammed himself bodily into the General’s legs, like always.

“Oof,” Kenobi said, and knelt down to get eye level with the toddler, and then, “Patience,” with a small smile. “Let’s allow your uncle to have something to drink first before he has to head back across the desert. Would you like some juice?”

“Juice!” Luke cheered, arms flung up, and grabbed the General’s hand to start towing him towards the kitchen.

Cody shook his head, hauled out a chair from under a tarp for Owen to sit in, and another for himself.

“You’re looking better,” Owen said, eyeing Cody up and down as he sat.

Cody was feeling better. Or, physically at least. This was a pretty good day mentally, too, now he thought about it. He nodded, and sat across from their guest, wordless. “Good,” Owen declared, and sat back. “Those are a lot of colors. Are you planning to use them all?”

“I’m going to let Luke choose,” Cody told him, and smirked. “I’m hoping he snaps by midday and starts fixing things just so there’s an even coat.”

There was really no question who he meant. Owen laughed.

* * *

The plan had come together slowly, in the back of Cody’s mind while he wasn’t paying attention. It had started with something largely unrelated, two days after the Larses had come and helped the General set up a second bed.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, it started with an argument that shouldn’t have been an argument. Or, maybe, it started with Cody staring blankly down at his hand, at the credit chit the General had just handed to him, while General Kenobi didn’t fidget in the way Cody knew meant he was deliberately not fidgeting, a respectful two steps back from where Cody was sitting at the dining room table. Cody, mind curiously blank and echoing with… something, carefully put his spoon back into the porridge bowl he’d made himself start eating.

“For emergencies,” General Kenobi said, in that tone he used to use on skittish civilians he needed to talk down from a full-on panic attack. Cody didn’t appreciate it.

“Emergencies,” he repeated, and winced internally as his voice came out… flatter than he’d meant.

The General sighed, shoulders slumping ever so slightly in Cody’s peripheral vision. Cody’s jaw tightened in response, eyes still glued to the chit in his hand.

“Yes,” General Kenobi said, and took another step forward. “For emergencies. You are not a prisoner here, Cody. You can come and go as you please. If you choose to do so, you should have access to some currency.”

“That sounds more like casual use,” Cody opined, the echo of something in his empty head getting louder.

“Well,” the General said, and let the silence speak for him. Cody swallowed, convulsively, and closed his fingers on the chit.

“Would you like me to leave,” he forced himself to ask.

“What?” General Kenobi stiffened up out of his oh-so-careful posture of peace and unconcern. Cody looked up and met his eyes. They were surprised.

Good.

“No, Cody, I am not--this is not a hint,” the General said, very firmly.

“Sounds like a hint,” Cody told him, calm around the echoes.

“It’s not,” the General said again. “It’s--”

“A way for me to leave, if I want to,” Cody cut in.

“...Yes,” the General admitted, and Cody’s throat closed up. “But the operative phrase there is ‘ _if you want to’_.”

“I’m fine,” Cody said, and his hand tightened on the chit, which was--

Was--

(He had nowhere else to go, and no one else to go to.)

(Where did the General think he would _go_?)

General Kenobi met his eyes again, and his hands came up, hovering, like he wasn’t sure if Cody would appreciate him reaching out. “Alright,” he said, not quite soothing, and Cody wanted to _scream_. He didn’t need the Negotiator to _manage_ him, he-- “It’s there if you want it, even for a trip into town. That’s all.”

Cody nodded, felt the muscles in his jaw jump from the words he was keeping behind his teeth, and pocketed the chit. “Thank you, sir,” he said, and turned very deliberately back to his porridge.

“Obi-Wan,” the General corrected, sounding tired.

“Thank you,” Cody said, and left off the ‘sir’.

He had already resolved that he wouldn’t be using the General’s money, even if he did finally decide he wanted Cody gone.

* * *

Luke wasted zero time, once Owen had been escorted to the door by a long-suffering General Kenobi, in dashing up to the paint cans. He was physically vibrating in excitement. “Which one do we start with? Can we do the red?” Without waiting, Luke reached for the can, red swatch carefully painted onto the lid, and started hauling it away. “Cody I want the red paint.”

“Alright,” Cody said, pinching his lips to hide a smile. “Which wall?”

“This one,” Luke said, pointing at an entryway wall seemingly entirely at random.

“Ah,” General Kenobi said, looking from Luke to the paint to the first wall anyone would see upon entering the hut, and then looked at Cody.

Cody plastered his best ‘drill sergeant’s yelling and I am a brick wall’ face on, and looked back. “Good choice,” he told Luke, still making direct eye contact with his General, daring him to have a different opinion.

The General caved first, sighed the sigh of the soul-weary perpetually surrounded by children, and went to, presumably, make himself some tea. Cody, magnanimous in his victory, did not allow his body language to show how ridiculous he thought General Kenobi was being. “Here, kid,” he said, and bent down, next to Luke, pulling the paint can over to a tin and roller. “Painting a wall is different from painting a picture. Let me show you.”

* * *

Cody got very used to the view of the blank, dusty white walls from the bed, over the course of his convalescence. Sometimes he got up and sat in one of the three available chairs instead, just for the change in vantage-point. Sometimes, when he thought the inactivity was going to drive him even more insane than it already had, he got up and pulled out the old broom from where General Kenobi left it in the kitchen, swept the sand from the floors of the depressingly small, shabby hut and out the front door.

“You don’t have to do that, Cody,” General Kenobi had said, the first time he’d caught him at it. Cody didn’t really know what he did all day, in the cellar or outside. Presumably, it had something to do with the water he brought in, the vegetables in the basket in the kitchen that never seemed to run out. “You’re still healing.”

“Only so long I can sleep, sir,” he’d said, because it had been early enough on that he was still being stubborn about that.

“Obi-Wan,” General Kenobi had corrected, firmly, and Cody had gone back to sweeping instead of finding him an answer.

A day later, Cody had woken up aching and groggy, and found three flimsy books sitting on the table beside the bed.

That was par for the course, in the first few days, dragging on into the first tenday and partway into the second. It had felt, at times, like he was alone in the hut. General Kenobi moved through it almost silently, like a ghost in an empty, abandoned shack. He’d go from being lost in his own head to hovering at Cody’s elbow, claustrophobic, like he was waiting for Cody to give him some sort of cue.

Cody didn’t really know what the General was waiting for, but _he_ was really, really getting tired of these same dusty white walls, day after day. Life after Order 66 had felt like nothing but white on white on white, like being back on Kamino except _blanker_ , empty. The Empire had stripped away everything but the basic plasteel white of their unpainted armor and abandoned them all to it, and sometimes, when he was feeling particularly low, Cody felt like he could choke on the white still around him, wondered what the point of being free was, if it was just going to be more of the same.

He couldn’t leave, though. He’d be listed as MIA by now, but it would take months, maybe a year, for the system to tick over and change that M to a K. Until then, he had to stay under the radar, for the sake of the people housing him, for the safety of the little boy who’d wandered into the sitting room that first night and thought absolutely nothing at all of asking Cody’s name.

He sat on the bed, or in one of the chairs, and cleaned the ever-present dust off of blank, white armor, and tried not to scream.

* * *

Very predictably, Luke, once talked into wearing gloves and a face mask against the paint fumes, ended up with more paint on himself than on any of the entryway walls. The areas he managed to paint were patchy and uneven, and he got bored partway through and decided to go put handprints on the wall behind him, giggling all the while. Cody had him pick another color--bright blue, a shade off the color that blue lightsabers tended towards, in Cody’s experience--and had him start on the wall with the handprints, cleaning up some of Luke’s bit of wall so at least there was no white left within the vibrant red.

(He would have gone over the rest of the wall, too, long-held standards about the acceptable quality of a paint-job kicking in without him really noticing, but the General appeared, shoulders relaxed and tea in hand, eyes alighting on Cody’s clean-up efforts with too-knowing eyes. Cody stopped halfway through rolling paint over Luke’s patch of wall and turned to work on the other wall instead. The General rolled his eyes and made himself comfortable on a chair.)

“Cody,” Luke demanded, and imperiously made another handprint on Cody’s freshly painted blue wall. “You gotta make handprints too! Like this, see?”

“I see,” Cody said, feeling something that was slowly winding tight relax a bit, and he put his gloved hand in the red paint and pressed it into the wall next to Luke’s. There was absolutely no way this color was going to go over the bright red to hide this. “Like this?”

“Yes,” Luke said, with all the authority of his four short years, and then rounded on his heel to go run up to the General. Cody got the absolute pleasure of watching the General’s eyes go wide before he practically dropped his tea in an effort to avoid full-on painted toddler collision. “Hi, Mr. Kenobi, we’re done with the walls in there, see?”

Cody blinked, and looked at the half-painted wall in front of him. The expression on General Kenobi’s face when he glanced back was… just about as amused as Cody felt.

“Are you,” the General asked, and set his tea down. “Well, how about a break then, Luke? Would you like a snack?”

“Blue milk!” Luke declared, and turned to dash towards the kitchen, trailing red and blue spatters and half-footprints over the floor in his wake. General Kenobi sighed, giving the mess a long-suffering look, and then a look somewhere between amused and exasperated at Cody when he huffed a laugh. Cody looked back, unrepentant, and the General rolled his eyes exaggeratedly as he turned to follow their charge into the kitchen. “And then I’m gonna paint _that_ wall green an’ _that_ wall pink, and Cody’s gonna paint _that_ wall yellow! An’ you can paint the kitchen orange, Mr. Kenobi--”

Where he was finishing the last of the second wall and turning to do the trim and wall around the doorway, Cody froze.

“I think I wouldn’t do _nearly_ as good a job as you will, Luke,” General Kenobi responded, in the kitchen now and out of sight, and Cody was suddenly just--

“ _I_ think you live here too, sir,” shot from Cody’s mouth before he could bite it back, something like rage behind his teeth with a sharp suddenness that sent him reeling, dizzy. He closed his mouth on anything else, took a breath and swallowed it down. He--

He could actually _hear_ the General pause in the kitchen, frozen where he stood, and Cody turned back to the wall and let himself press too hard on the roller, finish what he was doing with quick, efficient strokes before blindly picking another paint can and picking up a brush for the trim.

“Yeah, Mr. Kenobi, you gotta help too,” Luke scolded, and Cody felt _ridiculous_ . Childish and petty. For kriff’s sake, what was wrong with him, he used to command _armies_.

“...Maybe I will later, then,” the General said, purportedly to Luke, tone too careful to not actually be directed at Cody. “I wouldn’t want to intrude on your artistic vision, Luke.” Cody, still in the front entryway, painting a hut that wasn’t his, nearly laughed again. Intrude, like this was some sort of--of _ritual_ Cody was performing. Exorcism, maybe. Cody didn’t know. He’d never been a big fan of religion, for all he served under a Jedi Master. He stared at a white patch of trim in front of him and hated it with a passion that made him want to claw right out of his skin to escape it.

“It’s okay,” said the four-year-old who was apparently more mature than a former Marshal Commander of the Grand Army of the Republic. “I’ll help you pick colors, and Cody can show you how to use the roller brush!”

“That’s very thoughtful of you, Luke, thank you,” General Kenobi said kindly, and then there were footsteps, and Cody turned resolutely back to the trim he was apparently painting lime green.

* * *

“You’re awake,” the General observed one day, coming in from outside. Cody was. It had been a bad night, full of nightmares and swirling, dragging thoughts, and he’d woken up just before dawn four hours ago to find himself alone in the hut. He nodded, couldn’t help but take in the easy movements of the man before him as General Kenobi hung up his outer robe and mask, let them ease the clawing, lying certainties laying just beneath the blank surface he’d achieved in his mind.

“You aren’t wearing a weapon,” he realized, and the exhausted fog crashed away all at once, a sharp shock like ice water.

“Hm?” the General finished hanging up the robe, turned and stretched as he pointed himself towards the kitchen--and, presumably, tea. “Oh. No.”

Cody shut his eyes and took a deep, steadying breath, and then got out of bed. “You _should_ wear a weapon,” he suggested, keeping his voice calm, “when you go out at night on a world like this.”

The General looked over at him, eyebrows raised, and Cody followed him into the kitchen. “You of all people know I’m hardly helpless without one,” the General scolded, and reached forward to set the kettle on the stove.

“You should wear a weapon anyway,” Cody said again. _You should wear a weapon all the time. You have a sleeper agent in your house. I still have that chip in my head--_ “You drive Owen and Beru spare with this sort of thing.” _You always drove me crazy with this sort of thing._

“Ah, I see they’ve been tattling,” the General responded, amusement curling, and pulled out both tea and a small parcel of caff, which Cody knew for a fact he wouldn’t drink short of mid-strategy meeting on about 54 hours awake. “I know the dangers around me, Cody. I assure you, there are none close.”

“You can’t be _sure_ of that,” Cody said, and by some miracle his voice was steady.

“I am a Jedi Master, I promise you I can be,” the General replied, levelly.

“Past experience,” Cody insisted, leaning against the wall next to the stove, “would indicate otherwise.” The General’s eyes cut to Cody. Silence stretched out between them like the endless sea of Kamino, dark and pitiless and dangerous in its depths.

“Cody,” the General said. “I assure you, I am perfectly safe.” _You are perfectly safe._

There was a chip in Cody’s head, that with three words had once wiped from him all those things that he’d thought were unshakeable, untouchable. The few things he’d claimed as his, in the place he’d thought nobody could reach. Had twisted him and choked him out and turned him on one of the people he’d have stepped in front of a cannon blast _for_ , if his mind had truly been his own.

That chip was still in his head. There was not a single damn moment where Cody was not breathlessly, nauseatingly aware that it was still in his head.

“Please, carry a weapon, sir,” he tried again, and already knew he wouldn’t win. The kettle whistled. The General turned, shut off the heat, and picked the kettle up, pouring the water first over the caff grounds for Cody and then over the tea for himself. He turned, when Cody’s cup was full, and handed it to him, fingers brushing Cody’s own when Cody reached to take it.

“I don’t need one,” he said. “And it’s just Obi-Wan now, Cody.”

* * *

Miraculously, they made it all the way through the area where the bed Cody used generally sat and partway through the dining area before Cody’s four-year-old painting companion hit the bitter end of his ability to concentrate, aided in part by Luke completely giving up on the paint roller and instead beginning to draw pictures over all the walls with his gloved fingers, giggling. The General at least made himself useful engaging Luke in conversation, so Cody could get a large part of the wider swathes of wall finished.

Finally, though, Cody made the unconscionable mistake at looking over at Luke’s corner and saying “hey, I think you missed a spot, kid.”

“No!” Luke said, turning to him, bottom lip wobbling. “It’s supposed to be like that!”

“...I think we should cover up the primer, though,” Cody hedged. “It’s going to get dirty like that. What about another color?”

“No! It has to stay white!” And then Luke burst into tears.

_Damn_ , Cody thought, resigned, and dropped his paint roller to dash over there before Luke could rub at his eyes with paint-covered gloves.

“Alright, alright,” he said, hurriedly tugging the gloves and mask off Luke and then hauling him into his lap. He took a flailing fist to the face for his trouble, but that was fine. Cody’d definitely had worse. “It can stay white, that’s fine.”

“Really, Cody,” and the General was kneeling down beside them, movements light and silent as they’d ever been. “How dare you question the artist’s vision.” Cody snorted.

“My mistake,” he drawled. “I’m sorry, kid.”

“At least it’s in the corner,” the General offered, philosophically, and Cody hid a smile he was sure would not be appreciated by the child slowly coming to hiccuping calm on his lap.

“Hey,” he tried again, and turned Luke so he could look him in the face. “It’s alright, we’ll leave that bit white.”

“Promise?” Luke asked, face streaked with wet and a patch of yellow that had somehow managed to make it under the mask to settle near his ear.

“Promise,” Cody agreed, and then shook the hand that was very seriously offered to him to seal the deal.

“It’s better,” Luke told him, and behind him the General froze, looking down at the toddler with a strange look on his face. “It makes the other colors better if you leave it.”

“...Okay,” Cody said, eyes shooting back to General Kenobi. The General shook his head, started to stand.

“Why don’t we let Cody finish in here and clean up for second meal, Luke?” he offered. “And then you can finish telling me your story.”

And then we can be quiet for a bit until you fall asleep, he meant, but Luke took to the suggestion with his usual cheer, good mood as suddenly returned as it had left. The General took Luke’s hand and led him to the ‘fresher, Luke chattering all the way. Cody eyed the bare patch of wall with distaste.

“At least it’s in the corner,” he repeated, wryly, and stood up to finish covering the dining room and stairwell up to the kitchen in the awful moldy green color Luke had chosen.

* * *

In hindsight, a fight had been inevitable.

To be perfectly honest, Cody didn’t even remember what it had been about; something immaterial, like the General moving something Cody had put down somewhere specifically, or like Cody being startled when he turned around in what he thought had been an empty room to suddenly find his General in the chair behind him, or like the blaster that had been propped next to the door all day and the lightsaber the General had left in a box under his bed.

Now, it was about this.

“You haven’t been outside in over a tenday,” the General snapped, looming in his robes, somehow bigger than he actually was. Cody planted his feet, knuckles white on the chair back he was holding too hard.

“To do what, precisely,” he snapped back. “I can stare at the desert just as easily from a window as I can from the front stoop, General--”

“Obi-Wan.”

“Kark you,” Cody spat, suddenly _incandescently_ angry.

“It’s a simple request, for my own comfort in my own home! And you should go _outside_ , because locking yourself away in this hut is going to drive you mad! There are days when you sit in the same chair until the suns set!”

“What do you suggest I do _instead_? You don’t even like it if I _sweep_ \--”

“You’re a creative man, _Commander_ , I’m sure you can come up with something--”

“It’s not my _house_ , it’s _yours_ \--”

“You are not a prisoner here,” General Kenobi shouted, and Cody was so startled at this man, of all people, raising his voice, that his own voice abandoned him for a moment. “You can change whatever you want! You can come and go as you please! You can _leave_ , if you wish!”

Cody stared at him, jaw tight. The silence opened around them like a gaping maw, wide and hungry enough to swallow them both whole.

“Fine,” he said, and turned on his heel, stomped to the door and hauled on the hooded poncho and mask left there in his size. He was out the door, blaster slung over his shoulder, before the General managed to say anything else.

* * *

Through what Cody could only imagine were the mystical ways of the Force, the General managed to get most of the paint off of Luke’s skin and change him into the clean set of clothing Owen had left while Cody finished up the main room of the hut. They ate in the kitchen to remove any temptation to get messy again, and to avoid as many of the inevitable fumes as they could while the paint dried. That complete, they hauled one of the chairs up into the kitchen area and let Luke play with the cooking implements, sat quietly with him and traded off telling stories until he dropped off. Cody strongly suspected further misuse of the mystical power connecting all things, but very politely didn’t say anything.

“I doubt he’ll be particularly interested in continuing, once he wakes,” the General mused, carefully shifting their charge into the chair and covering him up with a blanket that had made its way in. Cody sighed.

“Well,” he said philosophically, “I can do the ‘fresher while he naps, at least, and maybe tackle the kitchen once Owen comes to pick him up.” The General hums, stretching out his back where he stood next to Luke’s chair, and bent down to get the kitchen implements.

“If you’d like,” he said, light and casual in a way that _immediately_ made Cody wary of whatever was about to come out of his mouth, “I can help while your assistant is indisposed.”

Cody felt his thoughts freeze in his head, felt his face go parade-rest blank as he turned to look at his General, eyebrow raised.

General Kenobi looked back, blue eyes calm and steady near the stove. “You’re right,” he said, quietly. “I live here, too. I’m afraid I’ve neglected the place, since moving in.”

Cody swallowed, breathed slowly in and out. “Would certainly get this finished faster,” he allowed, feeling out the words carefully as he said them.

“It would,” the General agreed, with a small smile. “I can even start on the kitchen, if you’re willing to watch Luke once he wakes.”

“...This is a ploy to get an even coat on even one room of the house,” Cody accused, mouth pulling up at the corners absolutely in spite of himself.

“I’m sure I have no idea what you mean,” General Kenobi demurred, hands tucked into his sleeves in the position he thought made him look serene and wise. Cody let himself laugh. It felt good.

“Help me with the ‘fresher, and we’ll see how our tiny ‘alor feels when he gets up,” he offered.

“Deal,” General Kenobi agreed, and smiled back.

* * *

He ended up staying out all night, which he knew was immensely stupid with no water and exactly one blaster on a planet like Tatooine.

He really could not have cared less.

The desert was blessedly quiet, and cooler than even the hut with the suns down and the moons out. Cody picked a direction and followed it, vaguely remembering that there was a small village somewhere out in this direction, for all the good it would do him.

He lost the anger somewhere between the second and third hour walking. Then he just felt tired.

The suns were beginning to come up when he reached the cluster of huts shoved together against a natural stone outcropping--a handful of residential buildings, some moisture vaporators, a general store and a mechanic’s shop for speeders and small ships. The being was just opening the speeder store as Cody finally slid down the last dune and into the area probably meant to be a village square.

“Good morning, traveller!” the being called, looking Cody up and down and apparently deciding he wasn’t a threat. “If you’re walking through the Wastes at night, I’ll bet you’re stranded. I can take you out to your speeder and do on-site repairs, or I can sell you some parts, if you’d prefer!”

Cody shook his head, opened his mouth to tell the mechanic no, thank you, he was fine, when his eyes fell on the display set up in the store window. “...Do you have paint for sale?” he asked, slowly.

The being raised a single slow eyebrow. “...I do,” they said. “You in the market for paint, this early in the morning?”

Cody reached into his pocket. The damn credit chit was still there. “Yes,” he said, and walked into the store.

* * *

They finished the fresher and had started the kitchen, moving carefully and quietly around Luke’s chair, before Luke finished his nap. “I have the rest of this,” General Kenobi said. “There was a sun hat in the bag Owen left, if you want to take him outside.”

“I wanna see if the fossil is still there,” Luke declared, loudly, so Cody accepted his fate, quickly changed into clothes not splattered with wet paint, and took Luke out to get some fresh air.

“I’m gonna build a fortress,” Luke declared, running for the door and nearly tripping over the various piles of things in his way.

“I thought you wanted to see the fossil,” Cody replied, hiding a small smile as he reached down to right--

\--the parcel his armor was in, carefully cleaned and set aside under a tarp to keep it that way.

Oh, he thought, fingers itching. Right.

“Yeah!” Luke said, oblivious to Cody’s sudden change of heart.

“You can do both,” Cody suggested, and all at once made a decision, picked the parcel up and went to get some paint cans and a brush. “I have one more thing I need to paint, though, so if you want to go see the fossil you have to wait until I’m done.”

“But Cody,” Luke whined, turning big, wet eyes on him.

“How are you going to make a fortress?” Cody asked, and Luke miraculously switched tracks back to his plans to somehow create a shelter with whatever he found on the ground.

Cody kept an eye on Luke as he set the tarp down and the blaster in easy reach so he’d have his hands free, laid out the armor inside properly and did one last wipe of the whole thing with the cloth he’d left inside, before turning to look at the six smaller cans of yellow paint he’d brought with him. None of them were really the right color, but he could probably mix them--

“That’s stormtrooper armor,” Luke declared, coming to a windmilling halt in front of Cody and peering down at the white plasteel, suddenly interested in whatever it was Cody was interested in. Cody hummed, amused, and looked back to Luke.

“It’s mine,” he said. “During--the war I fought with Mr. Kenobi,” he started, carefully, “we would paint it, so we could tell each other apart by sight in the field.”

“They don’t do that anymore,” Luke told him, with the air of someone imparting knowledge.

“They don’t,” Cody agreed, “but I’m not a stormtrooper anymore, so I’m going to.”

“‘Kay,” Luke said, and flopped down on the sand, watching Cody pull a few of the paint cans open. “Whatcha going to paint?”

“First, I need to get the right color,” he said. “So I’m going to have to mix a few of these together.”

“You should mix’em on the armor,” Luke said, perking up. “‘Cuz then you can use _all_ of them!” Cody--

\--Okay, yeah, Cody admitted that wasn’t a bad idea. Still, though. “Hey, it’s _my_ armor,” he said, sternly, meeting Luke’s eyes. “I get to decide. Don’t be rude, Luke.”

Luke’s eyes widened, and then he slumped, the very picture of contrite and sad. “Sorry, Cody.”

“That’s alright,” he said, and gave Luke a smile to show there were no hard feelings. “I don’t mind suggestions, but I get to make the final decision. Even if you don’t like it. Okay?”

“Okay,” Luke said, and then promptly got distracted by something blowing into his line of vision by the wind.

Cody shook his head, amused again, and bent back to his task. He had six shades of yellow and orange, so he started in the upper left quadrant of the chestplate, pouring paint on carefully and mixing it down the front with the brush until he was satisfied he was as close to 212th gold as he would get. He spread that out over the rest, covering the whole rest of the chestplate in an even coat, before picking up the darkest color again.

“Whatcha gonna paint now?” Luke asked, suddenly at Cody’s elbow, and Cody looked over.

“A sunburst,” he said, and sketched it in with the brush, carefully. “See?”

“Wizard!” Luke declared, and flopped down again. Then he frowned. “What about the other one, though?”

“Hm?” Cody asked, keeping his hand steady as he drew out a single thick line.

“There’re two suns, Cody,” Luke said, like he was being stupid. “You gotta have both!” Cody paused as he lifted the brush, raised an eyebrow at Luke pointedly. Luke deflated. “Well, you _do_ ,” he said mulishly, crossing his arms. “They’ll get lonely!” Cody sighed.

“Maybe I’ll put them both on the backplate,” he offered, and pointed at that piece. Luke turned to look at it, suspiciously. “It’s _my armor_ , Luke.”

“Ugh,” Luke said, grumpy, and flopped backwards onto the ground in the most dramatic slump Cody had ever seen from him. “Fiiiiiine.” Cody laughed, couldn’t help himself, and started on a second stripe.

“Can I help?” Luke asked, scrambling back upwards, suddenly bright again. Cody lifted the paint brush before he could mess it up laughing.

“ _Luke_ ,” came the General’s disapproving voice behind him, because the man had apparently _snuck up on them_ while Cody wasn’t paying attention. Cody did not jump, but he did wonder, for a long moment, whatever happened to that bell Ghost Company had gotten their General for Life Day that one year, and then where Cody might go about getting another one. “You shouldn’t insert yourself--”

All at once, Cody didn’t want him to finish that sentence. “You can,” he interrupted, practically _feeling_ the General’s startled surprise, “paint this piece.” He put the brush down carefully and picked up a shoulder pauldron. Luke brightened like the sun. Cody couldn’t help but smile. “If,” he continued. Luke slumped. Cadets, Cody swore.

“If,” Cody said again, unrelenting, “you go and get your gloves back on, and put something over your clothes so you don’t get them covered with paint again. And,” he met Luke’s eyes. “No white. None at all, Luke, understand?”

Luke cocked his head at Cody, and then nodded, very seriously.

“Okay,” Cody said. “Go and get your gloves and something to wear.”

“‘Kay!” Luke said, cheerfully, and barely managed not to take a header into the floor as he dashed back inside.

“Careful!” Cody called, but the kid was already gone, presumably to find his gloves.

“...I’ll go after him,” the General said, voice wry.

“Probably for the best,” Cody agreed, and set the pauldron back down as the General went after their guest. He finished the stripes on the chestplate, and picked up the backplate, carefully redoing his paint mixing before filling in the rest of the armor. He’d started sketching out two suns diagonally, their rays criss-crossing each other over the length of the plasteel, when Luke tripped back outside, rekitted with gloves and what looked like one of the General’s tunics, paintbrush firmly in hand.

“There you are,” Cody said, and picked up the pauldron. “Here. What color do you want?”

“Yellow!” Luke cheered.

“You’re in luck,” Cody drawled. “They’re all yellow.”

“Nuh uh,” Luke insisted. “ _That_ one’s yellow.” Cody rolled his eyes heavenward.

“You can have this yellow,” he relented, and handed it over. Behind him, the General slipped back out onto the stoop.

Cody took a deep breath.

“Obi-Wan,” he called, and ignored the start as he picked up a vambrace, holding it out.

The silence between them stretched out again, broken by Luke’s cheerful commentary as he told Cody about the proper way to draw a sun.

The General took the vambrace. “No white?” he clarified, as he turned to reach through the door and came back out with his own brush.

“No white,” Cody confirmed, and bent back over his work.

* * *

Cody was halfway back to the General’s hut by the time the sound of a speeder reached him. He’d bought far too much paint for one person to carry on foot across the desert, had been picking up as many as he could hold, walking out twenty paces, putting them down, and then going back for another handful of paint cans. He looked up, squinted into the distance, watched as the small, moving dot resolved itself into Beru Whitesun in the Larses’ speeder, calm as the expanse of sand spread out from her in all directions.

“Cody,” she called, and waved, came to a stop next to him as he set his latest handful of paint cans down and wiped sweat off his face before it could fall into his eyes. “Ben sent us to look for you. I think you gave him a bit of a scare, storming out and then staying away so long.” She smiled, no judgment in her eyes, even as Cody’s spine decided whether or not to straighten in defensiveness. “I see what must have kept you. Do you want a ride?”

Cody… paused, looking over his paint cans and the speeder and the empty expanse of desert around him, assessing. He didn’t really have a reason to refuse, other than stubbornness. Beru watched him like she had all the time in the world, would wait him out for the rest of eternity and then another after that.

“Thank you, yes,” he said, finally, and Beru nodded, cheerfully, got out of the speeder to help him collect paint cans.

“Redecorating?” she teased. “I’m glad. Ben doesn’t take enough care of that place. It looks like he’s barely camping there, from what I can tell.”

Cody hummed, noncommittal, and finished loading the cans into the back. “I’m just tired of white,” he confessed, and got into the passenger side. Beru hummed back, and sat back down in the driver’s seat, starting them moving again along the dunes towards the General’s hut.

“Well, I suspect anything you do will be an improvement,” she told him, still just as cheerful.

“I’m aiming for ‘eye-searing’,” Cody confessed, and Beru laughed like it was startled out of her. “...Actually,” he said, as it occurred to him. “Would you mind if we borrowed Luke sometime next week? I bet he’d enjoy it, and it might keep the General from actually killing me, for what I’m about to do to his property.”

“...Oh,” Beru says, looking startled. “Apology pictures.” Cody frowned, turned to her to ask for clarification, but-- she shook her head, gave him another smile. “Nothing, lost in my own head. I think you’re right, Luke would like that very much. We’ll make a plan, when we get you home.”

**Author's Note:**

> So good news: I have planned out all the fics in this series! Probably. Maybe. Hopefully? Oh god.
> 
> I tried to set a good balance between present day with Luke and... how they got there XD; Y'all will have to tell me how I did!
> 
> For the record: Tiniest Prophet Luke is my favorite thing about this series, fight me.
> 
> Come find me at [@adiduck](adiduck.tumblr.com) for WIPs and dumb shit and "witty" commentary.
> 
> ETA: This fic now has fan art! :O that_annoying_fool, thank you again. Everyone head [over here](https://ibb.co/gVFK6Lf) and take a look at how amazingly cute this is!


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